Pray for Guinea

Today's blog entry is a throwback to the start of our blog, a thankfulness post, and a huge prayer request all wrapped in one.  Our blog was born when we went to Guinea, West Africa eight years ago as a way to keep our family and friends updated on us and what God was doing there.  We spent two years teaching third and fourth graders at Teachus Mission International Christian Academy, a small boarding school for nationals.  After we left Guinea we tried to keep in touch with our students by sending letters or a package every year or two and by reading the full time missionary's newsletters as well.  However, we were only able to receive correspondence back from our students once when a friend went to Guinea a couple years ago and was able to bring back letters our students had written.  Those letters were so precious and we treasured them very much.

Silly picture! Taken at the end of our second year

So you can imagine our excitement when one of our former students sent me a Facebook request this summer!  Guinea is a third world country and we lived in a village with no running water or electricity, so I was really surprised that technology advanced enough there to make this possible!  Since that first Facebook request, I have been able to reconnect with other students and write emails back and forth.  When I see recent pictures of them, I can't believe how much they have grown.  My once little third graders are now men and women!  I am so thankful that we can now keep in touch more regularly as I have missed and prayed for them over the years.

To have the ability to reconnect with our students from Guinea has been a huge and timely blessing because I've been able to keep better updated with how the students and their families are doing.  Many of you know that the Ebola virus has hit Africa hard, and the outbreak actually began in Guinea.  Soon after the 2014 school year began, the full time missionary and his family that we served with made the very difficult decision to temporarily close the school and evacuate Guinea.  To give some perspective on how hard this decision was, I can tell you that they chose to stay in Guinea when one of the first teachers at TMICA died of cerebral malaria in the school's opening year.  In the ten years that have passed since the school opened, their family of five has stayed through many bouts of malaria, other sickness, riots, and other hardships.  In the following italicized paragraphs below, here are their words from their August newsletter regarding Ebola and their decision to leave.

"Liberian president declared the state of emergency for 90 days so that the military could be deployed to search for the hiding Ebola patients, door to door.  In the public announcement, she said, “Ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practice, continue to exacerbate the spread of disease.”  I totally agree with her assessment.  Ignorance is the key factor.

Ebola patients have about a 50% survival rate if they are treated but they would rather go to their village witch doctors.  They are simply hiding and spreading their virus to their family members around them.  Without treatment, the patient survival rate drops to about 10%.   Because of ignorance, they are spreading the virus more and more.  It has come to about 2-hour distance from our village.  (Originally it was about 8 hours away.)

Unlike the neighboring countries, the authorities in Guinea are doing almost nothing to stop the spread of the virus that is killing their own people. Life simply goes on.  The Ebola virus is deadly but it is not easily transmitted.  The virus is transmitted only through the bodily fluids like blood, saliva, urine and sweat.  If one washes one’s hands thoroughly, Ebola virus can be avoided.  (The experts agree on this point.) 

Our native coworkers at our center think that Ebola virus is concocted by the authorities to keep the public in control.  They don’t see the detrimental consequence if the virus comes to our center. It will probably close our school permanently.  Over ten years, we have been educating our coworkers about hygiene to keep our center clean so that we can avoid much of the sicknesses prevalent in this part of the world but they do not seem to understand it.  Every year, we are repeating the same things over and over again.  Last week I told them to limit the visitors during this time of Ebola epidemic because they could be carrying the virus.  They chuckled among themselves in a distance.  That made me sad that they don’t see the seriousness of the Ebola virus...  

With heavy hearts, we are making our preparations to temporary closing, not knowing when we will be able to return.  But we will return to reopen the school soon.  We are teaching our students and volunteers about the Ebola virus so that they can keep themselves safe until we meet again.  Though we are closing now, we will return to advance further in M4 missions."  
 
Just last week I read this article in the news that an Ebola education team of eight people composed of health workers, journalists, and local officials were killed. They had been visiting villages to raise awareness about preventing and containing Ebola.  They were stoned and brutally murdered by a mob that believed that the bleach they were distributing to kill Ebola was the virus itself.  The day after I read the horrible news, one of our former students sent me a heartbreaking message that his uncle was one of the eight that had been killed.  His uncle, Moise Mamy, was the head of his clan, a native pastor, and health worker with a Christian relief organization   I read about the tragic events that unfolded from an article in the Washington Post here and was so saddened by the news.  My thoughts and prayers go out to Martin and his family as they mourn the loss of a beloved community leader who died trying to do good.

Many of you who are reading this post prayed for us and the country of Guinea while we lived there.  We ask that you please continue to pray for Guinea.  Please pray that this epidemic would stop.  Please pray for protection on the TMICA students, their families, native staff, and the villages of Sambouya, Bilingkoro, Manya, and others surrounding the center that none would get the virus.  Please pray for Guinea and its neighboring countries Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal that have been affected by Ebola.  Having lived in Guinea, I look at what's going on and I am deeply concerned .  In a place where people gain knowledge and understanding by what they can literally see because that is their livelihoods (most of the people in the villages where we lived were subsistence farmers), you can imagine how educating people to trust in outsiders bringing in soap and bleach could be hard to receive.  The importance of good hygiene and sanitation were lessons that we needed to teach our students (we wondered why so many students had high fevers and got sick so often that first year until we did so), and it's telling of why the Ebola virus has been incredibly difficult to contain and eradicate.  So please, please pray with us.  Please pray so that the school can reopen again and the students can return to a place where they receive a good education and are encouraged and discipled in faith and love.  Please pray for the health care workers that are treating and educating people that their efforts would be well received and fruitful.  Please pray that the spread of this virus would cease and that the rest of the world would look at what's going on and see that there is a need to help.  Thank you for your prayers!

Thankfulness Part II- Our Summer in the States

Dear friends and family,

Every single day that we have is a gift, and that statement is something that's been running through my head recently.  I was reminded of this truth this week (I'll share why in my next post) and then again when I thought back to the six weeks we spent in the States this summer.  During our stay we received the gift of time with our parents, who we had not seen in two years!  We also saw our siblings, extended family, good friends (some that we didn't think we would have the opportunity to see!), and we even hosted a Hong Kong friend in Chicago for a couple days.  We got to see firsthand the healing work that God and the team of doctors in Cincinnati had done when we visited the Legers.  We marveled at our friends' new babies and how much kids had grown.  In six weeks we spent time in seven states, slept in six different beds, and praise the Lord, we learned that the kids could handle long road trips even if they weren't used to being in a car. :) The kids marveled at lush green lawns they could run in, pointed excitedly at "foreign" wildlife like squirrels, rabbits, and deer, and became good at recognizing whether a field was full of corn or soybeans. If you need any evidence of how excited I was to see our family and friends and we're friends on facebook, just scroll through my summer posts there and see just how many pictures I posted.  Here are some out of the many that I took.

Cousins!

Josiah hiking with Grandma in the Rocky Mountains

Ava enjoying a ride on Grandpa's tractor

Ava with Harabuji (my dad)

Josiah with Halmoni (my mom)

Kid pic at a family get together

Stanley, our church friend from Hong Kong, visited while we were in Chicago for a couple days

All of these experiences and get togethers (and food!) made for a wonderful summer.  We were so appreciative of the time people took to see us and treat us to foods we had missed, but the best gift we received was during our first two days in States when we flew into Tennessee.  We got to have the precious gift of time with Grandma June, Shannon's grandmother.  Two years ago when we left for Hong Kong we knew we might not see Grandma June again.  And we knew two years later as we headed to the States that she wasn't doing very well.  But Grandma June held on and the night we landed and the following morning we got to stand by her side, hold her hands, and tell her how much we loved her.  She passed away quietly that afternoon and three months later, I still miss her and it's hard to believe that she's no longer on this earth.

Grandma June was funny, warm, loving, and made you feel at ease from the moment you met her.  You would never know from spending time with her that she lived a life full of difficult circumstances because she wasn't defined by them.  She was thankful for what she had and she even dealt with hardship by throwing in humor and laughter.  She loved listening to gospel music and stayed young at heart even as a great grandmother.  I loved that there was nothing stuffy about her. She was genuine and incredibly down to earth.  She loved to tell a good story and have someone play along.  She loved her family and Jesus very much, and that was very evident in the many times she opened up her home and kitchen to all that walked in.  To have had the gift of time with her this summer and to be there for her beautiful funeral service that celebrated her life and the way she joyfully lived it was incredibly special.  I truly thank God that I had the privilege to know her and call her my Grandma June and look forward to the day when I'll be able to see and dance and laugh with her again in heaven.

She lived out this verse. "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad." Psalm 118:24

Grandma June striking a movie star pose :)